What about the whales in the hotel pool?

Have you heard? Walt Disney Parks and Resorts is planning to break ground next year on a Disney-themed family hotel complex near Ko Olina (Star-Bulletin, Oct. 4). We now have ample time to insist on an environmental impact study.

Imagine the scary thought of tens of thousands of family visitors, their children and scores of locals enjoying themselves and building new treasured memories! We don't want that to happen, do we? And will their loud laughter and happiness create intense noise pollution, thus disturbing our ohanas' quiet inner peace of mind, and that of the endangered humpback whales?

It's not too late! There is still time for everyone to protest and stop this amazing industry of progress from using their imaginative spirit and inspiring insight on our shores! There is still time to prevent the forming of millions of smiling faces, which will eventually spread to our outer islands! Is Disney going to put us at risk of losing our local Dark Age and caveman-style values?

John Burns
Aiea

Forces are at work to kill competition

If Mesa Air Group can be seen as possibly working toward driving an established business such as Aloha Airlines out of business, is it really such a stretch to see what is happening to a fledgling business such as Hawaii Superferry?

If go! is guilty, as soon as it pays its whopping fine and gets out of here, fair, competitive fares will be restored once again. Yes, as Hawaiian Airlines said, fares will go up if go! goes. For this interisland air travel market to survive, it must have fair and honest competition.

Stan Yoshioka
Honolulu

UH research center has ghastly goal

It is fascinating how American university presidents seem to be increasingly diverting their energies or performing their academic duties in support of the military.

Take former University of Texas president Robert Gates, who is now secretary of defense. A skeptic at first, Gates has become a champion of the unending war in Iraq. The illegal occupation he oversees has resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and more than two million Iraqi refugees.

Then there's Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, who, perhaps unwittingly, continued to fan the flames of war by castigating the Iranian president. All that's really left to do now is to bomb Iran to oblivion.

Here in Hawaii we have our own hero of the military industrial complex. The person most responsible for pushing through the Navy-affiliated applied research laboratory was University of Hawaii President David McClain. This was in spite of the fact that the student body, faculty Senate and community at large opposed the project.

Like Bollinger, McClain's justification came under the fashionable mantra of "academic freedom." With these words, killing a human being faster, more efficiently and from a greater distance means absolutely nothing when the military and money god shake hands.

Tony Castanha
Lecturer, political science

University of Hawaii

Ferry decision could have come earlier

Marsha Kitagawa's letter (Sept. 24) trying to justify the two-year delay in the Supreme Court's decision on the Superferry appeal is disingenuous. When the Judiciary branch of government doesn't want to address an issue head on, it provides statistics through its spokeswoman instead.

Clearly the Supreme Court justices took a vote (apparently unanimous) to reverse the July 12, 2005, judgment of the Maui Circuit Court and order a judgment entered in favor of the Superferry opponents. When was that vote taken? When was the decision made to assign Justice James Duffy to write his 104-page opinion? It was obviously done several months before its issuance on Aug. 31, 2007.

The Supreme Court's two-page order issued on Aug. 23, within a few hours after a window-dressing oral argument on the merits of the appeal, could and should have been issued at the time Duffy was assigned to write his long-winded decision thereby allowing an environmental assessment to be completed long before the Superferry's arrival in Hawaii.

Gilbert D. Butson
Honolulu

Expensive light rail will bankrupt Honolulu

President Bush seems to be bankrupting the U.S. economy with his Iraq war. Now Mayor Mufi Hannemann wants to do the same thing to the Hawaii economy with his multibillion-dollar, pie-in-the-sky light-rail transit system from nowhere to nowhere. Thank goodness we still have a few clear thinkers like City Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi and Cliff Slater, though we don't hear from them often enough.

James M. Walling
Honolulu

Don't let terrorism guide transit decisions

George Berish, in his letter of Oct. 3, stated that mass transit is a terrorist magnet. Well if that is true, we should also avoid airports because they can be crowded (also a terrorist magnet), cruise ship terminals (ditto), ferry terminals, the freeway at rush hour (also crowded, therefore a target) and stay on little-used back roads driving as if every other driver was a potential terrorist. We would be traveling terrorized, but isn't that what the terrorists want in the first place? If we did as Berish asked, we would be giving into terrorism.

Dexter Wong
Honolulu

Watada's unit bravely protected his rights

I read your article Wednesday on Hawaii-born Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, whose unit is returning from Iraq after an extended battle tour of 15 months at the same time his second trial is about to begin. While Watada safely sat behind a desk plotting and scheming his way out of his obligation to the Army and his country, his unit suffered 48 casualties. One must wonder if his replacement was killed or wounded.

The irony in all this is that while Watada cries foul that his constitutional rights are being violated, brave men and women have died to uphold the very Constitution he clings to to weasel his way out of battle. Sleep well, Ehren Watada, for 48 of your soldiers are now resting in peace and honor to uphold your rights.

Eric R. Daido
Mililani

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